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Missionary Work 


By Bishop HENRY W. WARREN 


The Missionary Society of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church 
Rindge Literature Department 
150 Fifth Ave., New York City 





The Place of Prayer 
in Missionary Work 


WirTH the consideration of agencies, wheels, first 
and fifth, of all sorts of machinery, comes con- 
sideration of the power. Ponderous, mighty, is 
the great mass of iron we call an engine, almost 
unmovable by external agencies. But give it the 
inner power and it takes a whole street over the 
range of mountains, and all humanity up the 
grades of civilization and progress. 

When one looks at the heathen world, terrorized 
by superstition, debauched by lust, debased by 
poverty, and horribly deteriorated by the worship 
of abominable gods, and then thinks of the per- 
fect stature of manhood in Christ Jesus, and that 
this stuff is to be made into the royal perfectness 
of the children of God, every man asks, Who is 
sufficient for these things? And the answer 
inevitably is, no man. But hear the true answer: 
“Not by might, not by an army, but by my 
spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts.” The point I 
wish to make is this: there is plenty of power 
provided in God’s universe for the changing of 
these sinners into saints, for the changing of 
ignorant men into wise men, for the changing of 
men dead in trespasses and sins, into saints, alive 
unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


The Realm of Power in the World 


Of course there must be a realm of power about 
this world or it would not exist. There must be 


3 


a source of power somewhere, or there would be 
none of these inferior powers. The powers that 
we handle, that we are proud to master, that we 
utilize for our advantage must have come out 
of some other realm. The might of gravitation, 
chemical affinity, cohesion, steam, dynamite, 
lightning, not one of these is sufficient either for 
its own origination or for its own continuance. 
Think of the crazy thought of men to have sup- 
posed that all earthly powers could have been 
envolved from a single potency of gravitation in 
the fiery star-dust of a cloud. Can we draw out 
from this force, the only one claimed to be in 
the universe, gravitation—can we draw out 
higher power, and still leave the other untouched? 
Can cohesion, chemical affinity, all possible mights 
be drawn out of the lowest, and it still be as 
mighty as ever? Never. We are domed over, 
domed under, girt round and permeated through 
with a spiritual power out of which all others” 
must come. We wonder that gravitation, in its 
might of swinging worlds, does not get weary and 
exhausted. Why not? Hast thou not heard that 
the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the 
earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? Power out 
of him lasts through the millenniums unwearied 
and unweariable. 

There have been mights which we are incapable 
of measuring. This Bible is a record of things im- 
possible to men: seas divided until a nation can 
go through dry shod; fire out of the heaven of 
such kind and fierceness as that it consumes com- 
mon water as common water puts out ordinary 
fire; all kinds of mights overmastering the lower 
mights of earth. And these are as real as gravita- 
tion, as actual as any power we know of. 


4 


HOW MUCH SHALL I GIVE THIS YEAR 
TO MISSIONS? 


A LITTLE ARGUMENT WITH MYSELF 


(1) If I refuse to give anything, I practical- 
ly cast a ballot in favor of the recall of every 
missionary, both in the home and foreign fields. 


(2) If I give less than heretofore, I favor 
a reduction of the missionary forces propor- 
tionate to my reduced contribution. 


(3) If I give the same as formerly, I favor 
holding the ground already won, but I oppose 
a forward movement. My song is, “Hold the 
Fort,” forgetting that the Lord never intended 
that His army should take refuge in a fort. 
All of His soldiers are under marching orders 
always. They are commanded to “Go.” 


(4) If I advance my offering beyond former 
years, then I favor an advance movement in 
the conquest of new territory for Christ. Shall 
I not join this class? If I add one hundred 
per eent to my former contributions, then I 
favor doubling the missionary force at once. 
If I add. fifty per cent, I say, Send out one half 
as many more; and if I add twenty-five per 
cent, I say to our Missionary Society, Send 
out one fourth more than are now in the field. 
What shall I do? I surely do not favor the 
recall of our whole missionary force, or of 
any part of it. Neither am I satisfied simply 
to hold our own so long as the great majority 
of the heathen world as yet have never heard 
of Christ. I do believe in greatly inereasing 
the present number of our missionaries, there- 
fore I will increase my former offerings to mig 
sionary work. 





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Knowledge of Power and its Existence 


The fact that men do not know of this power 
militates nothing against its actual existence. For 
ages men walked the earth and never knew there 
was a gravitation. Men drank the sparkling water, 
saw it distilled as the gentle dew, saw it glorified 
in the rainbow, and never knew that every drop of 
it was full of the irrepressible power of steam. For 
ages men walked the earth interpenetrated with > 
the might of electricity, and it is only to-day that 
it floods our homes with lights and hurls the cars 
along the streets. The fact that we did not know 
it for thousands of years is no argument against 
its existence and power; and the fact that men do 
not know there is a spiritual realm of might for 
the mastery of every other realm, does not militate 
against its real existence. So it is true that there 
is a realm of power over, under, around, within, a 
power for mind and heart, as really as there is 
power of gravitation for matter. And men can 
find their way into this realm and strengthened 
out of God, stand in the midst of every hostile in- 
fluence, and say to the mighty king, in answer to 
his command to bow down, “ We are not careful to 
answer thee, O king, in this matter, but be it 
known unto thee that we will not bow down.” 
And armies of men, commands of kings, the touch 
of fire to the flesh, do not alter that will that is 
strengthened out of the realm of power where the 
Will is infinite and almighty. 

Paul gives us a remarkable definition of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ: “ It is power.” This defi- 
nition grows more clear, more forceful, by every 
realm of power into which we break and every 
realm of mastery into which we come. The Gos- 


5 


pel of Jesus Christ is greater power. This being 
true, how shall we find our way into that realm, a 
realm as real, as subject to law, as ready to work 
for man, as any realm that exists in the universe, 


Things Impossible to Men 


T said this book is a record of things impossible 
to men. But they have been wrought. Clouds of 
thunderous darkness and rumbling wrath brooded 
‘over Sodom; but the lightnings were leashed over 
the pits of slime while Abram prayed. On the top 
of Carmel Elijah knelt by the drenched sacrifice 
and said: “ O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, 
and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou 
art God in Israel, and that I am Thy servant, and 
that I have done all these things at Thy word. 
Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may 
know that Thou, Lord and God, hast turned their 
heart back again.” ‘Then fire fell that could com- 
sume water as easily as ordinary water puts out 
common fire. 

Said Dr. Livingstone in Africa, “God had but 
one Son, and He was a foreign missionary.” How 
did that Son conduct His campaign? For Him- 
self? All night in prayer; dwelling in a realm of 
power surging about Him, thrilling His being. 
How did He apply it? On the top of the Mount of 
Transfiguration, He prayed, till glorified, trans- 
figured, He shone in His original brightness. 
When the crisis hour came, all night again in 
prayer, falling on His face like Elijah on Carmel, 
— ‘If possible, let this cup pass from me; never- 
theless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” 

He was about going away, leaving a few timid 
scattered disciples to turn the world upside down 
in the matter of morals and eternal hope. What 

6 


should be done for them? How could they be em- 
powered? “ Pray, pray the Father for the fulfil- 
ment of the promise of power.” They obeyed. 
They gathered together in that upper room. After- 
wards Peter addressed a great audience and gath- 
ered three thousand trophies in a day. Was it 
Peter’s eloquence, logic, argument? No. ‘The 
power was found in that upper chamber before he 
came to the ordinary audience. The same thing 
we find all the way along. Luther storms heaven; 
he is like Moses crying, “ Lord, this, or blot my 
name out of Thy book.” Wesley, John Knox— 
they show you in Edinburgh where his knees wore 
the very floor away as he said, “ O God, give me 
Scotland, or I die.” Livingstone, in the heart of 
Africa, about to be translated, uses not his last 
moments for preaching; he is in his tent on his 
knees. He storms heaven with his prayer till he 
cannot abide longer in the body, and he goes into 
the very shekinah to plead for Africa. And Hart- 
zell and Taylor went there largely in answer, not 
to his might, nor to an army, but by the Spirit of 
God employed by the dying missionary in Africa’s 
great heart. 

The great agency in our revivals, our missionary 
work, is somebody’s prayer that will not let God 
go until far in the morning, until the breaking of 
the light, except God bless and give souls. 


The Real Power of the Missionary Movement 


This, then, being the real power of the mission- 
ary movement, I bring this appeal. If I were to 
ask for money to set India afire, to kindle a flame 
in Africa, to give China all it wanted, you could 
not answer me. But I can appeal on a basis where 
every one can be a glorious helper in the mission- 


7 


ary cause. Every man can put his hand, not invo 
the treasuries of earth, but into the treasuries of 
heaven. Every lone woman in her garret or in her 
basement, can find her way to God, and as a result 
a great rushing wind of the mighty Spirit of Je- 
hovah himself shall fill the world, not with might, 
nor with an army, but with the Spirit of the living 
God. 

Shall we now vow ourselves to new earnestness 
of prayer, pledge ourselves, daily,—morning, even- 
ing, and night—to implore the court of Heaven 
that the spirit of the living God may be poured out 
and abide on all our missions far and wide. 

O Lord, revive Thy work! Let the heathen be 
given to Thy Son for an inheritance, and the utter- 
most parts of the earth for a possession? _ 


40 cents per 100 copies 


Series of 1903 


